“I think an autopsy will tell us more,” repeated the doctor, not caring to venture an opinion, looking somewhere over Mike’s left shoulder.
Mike turned to make sure there was no one else in the chilly white room.
The doctor continued, “I’ll know more after I have a look inside him, run some more tests. You did say he was a heavy drinker, right?”
“Yeah, and for Ryan, a BA of point one eight is serious but he’s still up and talking at that level.”
“Prolonged alcohol abuse can damage a person’s organs—heart, liver, stomach—so that a relatively mild binge could put him over the tipping point. Though at that stage, there are generally more signs of it externally.”
“Ah,” said Mike, nodding and writing. “Time of death?”
“Well, I’d estimate time of death at between two-thirty and three-thirty a.m. Monday morning.” Mike looked expectant and so the doctor, searching for something more to contribute, said, “There is what appears to be a cigarette burn on the sole of his left foot.”
“What do you make of that?”
The ME looked slightly exasperated. “That the man, who was barefoot when found, stepped on a lit cigarette.”
“That’s funny, because it was too cold outside to go barefoot, and there wasn’t a cigarette burn on the floor of Ms. Donohue’s sewing room.” It probably wasn’t important, but Mike wrote it down, because it was odd and you never knew. “Well, thank you, Doctor. Let me know when you’re ready to do the autopsy.”
“I’ll do that.”
Malloy, a medium-tall fellow with dark red hair and freckles thickly strewn across his thin-lipped face, sighed as he went out to his car to begin the tedious work of finding out about Ryan’s last hours.
S
HELLY, called out of the classroom, was interviewed with her live-in boyfriend, Harvey Fogelman, who’d been called away from his job at Exterior Artists, an architectural firm.
They said they were in bed asleep when Ryan came in, and so had no idea what time that might have been.
“So he has his own key?” asked Mike, notebook at the ready.
“Well, he has a key to the room he sleeps—slept in,” said Harvey, whose craggy features were the deep bronze color only hours in the outdoors can bring. Mike had discovered that Harvey was a landscape architect. Whatever “landscape architect” was, Harvey’s role was a great deal away from the drawing table.
Shelly continued, “We almost never lock our doors, unless we’re going out of town for a weekend or longer, which didn’t happen while he was living with us. But I made a copy of the key to my sewing room so he could have some privacy when he was in there.”
“He was supposed to stay with us just for a few days, at most a week,” Harvey put in, with a glance at Shelly. By the look Shelly was giving him, Ryan’s being allowed in the house at all was a deal made between Harvey and Ryan over Shelly’s objections.
“And instead, how long did Mr. McMurphy stay?” Mike asked.
“It would have been three weeks tomorrow,” she said tightly. “I wouldn’t have been so angry about it, except that he fell off the wagon. He got drunk every night starting last Thursday. I don’t know what started him drinking again. I believed him when he said he would quit. And then . . . this.” Her voice rose higher than usual, with more vibrato in it. She clearly was very upset—understandably so, since she was the one who came home to find the body.
And
in her sewing room.
Mike remembered a favorite aunt who had a room set aside for her quilting and knitting. It was a holy place; he was allowed in there only rarely. And once in, he had to step carefully, not touch or spill anything. So he could see how much worse it would be to have someone using the sacred place as a bedroom, much less to lie down and die in it!
“I believed him, too,” said Harvey in his deep, calm voice. “I would never have invited him to camp with us if I thought he’d overstay his welcome or get sloppy drunk every night.”
“Do you know where he’d go drinking?” asked Mike. “I’m trying to find out who saw him last.”
“No,” said Shelly, shaking her head. “His car isn’t parked around here, remember? Your men went searching for it but couldn’t find it. So maybe it was a friend who gave him a ride home from wherever he was last.”
“But we don’t know who the friend was,” said Harvey.
“Maybe it was Joey,” Shelly suggested to Harvey.
“Joey?” asked Mike.
“A drinking buddy. I don’t know his last name. He used to be a fireman until his arm got messed up.”
“Ah, Joey Mitchell. Thank you.” He wrote that down, thanked them, and left.
Joey Mitchell worked for an insurance adjuster, and when Mike arrived at his office, he said he was overdue for a coffee break. He took Mike to a small break room empty of other employees, and they sat down on flimsy plastic chairs at a Formica table.
Joey hadn’t brought Ryan home Sunday night, nor could he think offhand who might’ve done so. But he did know McMurphy’s watering spots. He named Haskell’s in Excelsior, and then some bars east of town. His favorites used to be—and probably still were—in Minnetonka and Saint Louis Park, two Minneapolis suburbs about fifteen and twenty minutes from Excelsior, respectively.
He was shocked at Ryan’s death but not really saddened. “We used to be good friends,” Joey said, “but not so much since I cut back on my boozing.” Mike wrote that down, too, and headed out.
He found Ryan’s car in St. Louis Park. It was in the little lot behind Ralph’s Happy Hour. The bartender on duty hadn’t worked last Sunday. He called the night shift bartender, who remembered the seriously drunk Mr. McMurphy being accosted by “this guy who comes in about four times a week.” The bartender thought his name might be Waylon. The day bartender said, “Oh, he means Waylon Halverson.”
Halverson’s wife said he was at his day job as a mechanic at an import motors shop on Thirty-Sixth Street. Mike found him bent over a Peugeot’s open hood and summoned him outside, where they stood under cloudy but not rainy skies.
“A crazy drunk named Ryan? Yah, I see him now and then. Off-and-on kind of guy, sobers up for a couple weeks, then he goes on a bender, then he sobers up. Me, I drink just a little, but steady. I’m in Ralph’s Happy Hour about every other night.”
“Did you see Ryan in Ralph’s Happy Hour on Sunday night?”
Waylon nodded. “Yah, as a matter o’ fact. I been out with the guys and was the last one still there when he came in, really pis—uh, drunk. He gets to this weird stage when he’s drunk, where he thinks there’s some kind of plot against him by someone with secret powers.”
Mike screwed on his most doubtful face. “A plot? By who?”
“Oh, nothin’ human. He says there’s these spirits and hexes and all kinds of crap floating around out there, and he’s some kind of magnet for ’em. He carries this steel ring with about a pound of rabbit’s feet and four-leaf clovers and even weirder junk on it, says it’s his ‘protection.’” Waylon snorted derisively.
“Did you talk to him?”
“About that? There’s no talking to him about it, all you get is a rant.”
“Well, about something else then? On the Sunday, I mean. What did he say?”
“Just that he was fine, he was going to be fine. But he wasn’t, he was about as drunk as I’ve ever seen him. And real, real nervous.”
“About what?”
Waylon shrugged. “The usual. Witches and black magic. More nervous than usual, but it was the same old story.”
Mike nodded comprehension, and asked, “Was he barefoot when you saw him, or did he take his shoes off while you were with him?”
Waylon stared at him in surprise. “No, why?”
“It’s not important. Do you know where he went when he left the bar?”
“He went home. I know that because I took him.”
Mike nearly smiled in delight. Here was a truly solid piece of information.
“When was this?”
“About eleven-thirty we left the bar, so I’d say he was back in Excelsior around midnight, maybe a little before.”
“Why did you take him home?”
Waylon snorted. “Because he was drunk on his a—butt. He tried to fool me with that second set of car keys, but I was on to that trick. Fool me once,
shame
on ya; fool me twice, shame on
me
.” He rested his bottom on the fender of an arrest-me-red Porsche and shoved both hands into the pockets of his pale blue coveralls. “So I took both sets and made him ask me nice for a ride home. He laughed half the way because I caught him over that trick, and cried the other half.”
“Why did he cry?”
“Because he wasn’t living at home but at a friend’s house. His wife threw him out because he’s so obnoxious when he drinks. He said he tried to quit drinking but someone set him up to get back on the sauce.”
Mike asked alertly, “Who?”
“He didn’t say. Or maybe he did, I wasn’t really listening. He’s likely to say anything when he’s drunk. I took him to this little house in Excelsior, he got out and I gave him back his keys, and I watched him stumble up the steps and go inside.”
“Do you remember the address?”
“No.” But when he described the house and its general location, Mike recognized it as the Donohue residence.
About then it occurred to Waylon to ask, “What’s this all about anyway?”
“Ryan McMurphy was found dead in that house around noon on Monday.”
Waylon straightened and pulled his hands out of his pockets. “He was? What happened?”
“We’re not sure yet.”
“I bet he fell.”
Again that alert feeling. “What makes you say that?”
“A friend of mine took a guy home who he thought was drunk, and the guy died in his bed, and it turned out he had fallen earlier in the day, smacked himself good on the head. He died in his sleep from bleeding inside his brain. He’d fallen down. He wasn’t drunk at all.”
Mike opened his notebook. “To your knowledge, did Ryan suffer a fall?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you he’d fallen?”
“No. But listen, I wasn’t with him all evening. He came into the Happy Hour already drunk. Or else having a stroke.”
“Did he smell like alcohol?”
“Hell, yes! But that could be why he fell, because he was drinking.”
Mike wrote that down because it could be true, thanked the man, and left.
B
ETSY had been assembling little holiday cross-stitch kits—each with a poinsettia pattern, fabric, floss, six gold beads, a needle—to sell at her checkout desk when Billie Leslie came in. Billie was an avid stitcher and, like most, always working out of season. Betsy was glad to be able to tell her that a kit she had ordered had come in. Bee’s Magic, it was called, and by the photograph on the outside of the packet, it was a surreal marvel. Worked on black, it depicted a broken-down picket fence entangled in morning glories and raspberry canes with a strange mix of birds, bees, butterflies, mice, and even a hedgehog sitting on a mushroom—a fantasy of a hot summer at nightfall.
“Would you consider letting me display this when it’s finished?” Betsy asked. Well-done models created orders, and Billie was a very competent stitcher.
“Well, let’s see how it comes out first,” said Billie. “It’s kind of at the far end of my skill, working on black. Listen,” she went on in a different tone, “I want to ask you what you’d think if the parade—”
She was interrupted by a
bing-bong!
as the doorbell chimed and in came a short woman with nervous mannerisms and black hair that stood up in little curls all over her head. She paused inside the door to look around, her shiny dark eyes alert.
“You’ve changed things around,” she said in a sharp, accusing tone.
“Hello, Irene,” said Billie in a cool voice. To Betsy, she added, “I’d better get going, I’ve got errands to run.”
“Thank you, Billie,” said Betsy, waving good-bye as the woman left. “Hello, Irene!” she continued. “You haven’t been here in a while.”
“Haven’t needed to,” said Irene briefly, still looking around.
Betsy came out from behind the big desk that was her checkout counter. Her smile of greeting began to feel a little false. “What can I do for you?”
“It’s what I can do for you,” replied Irene, pleased to have thought that retort up all by herself. She opened a flat, black canvas bag and brought out a piece of folded linen dyed in uneven shades of purple. She brought it to the table and unfolded it. The darkest shades were at the top, fading quickly to uneven swirls of pinky lavender across the middle. It was an angry sky dotted with little clusters of X’s, like leaves blown in a stiff wind. Near the top, just under the darkest purple dye and cradled in a thin, uneven line of purple cloud, was stitched a white sliver of moon.
“I dyed it myself, and I can get you all the yardage of it you want,” she said.
The bottom quarter of the fabric was also stitched—mostly cross-stitches—in browns, tans, and grays scattered with vertical stitches that made Betsy think of a weedy lawn or garden in late autumn. In the center was a big leafless tree—the knobby, crooked limbs proclaimed it an oak—and stuck rakishly on an upright limb was . . . Betsy bent closer over the design.
A witch’s hat. From a lower branch, lifted into a curve as if in a stiff breeze, hung the skeleton of a fish, and among the lifted roots of the tree was a half-buried but very realistic human skull.
The design looked simple at first, though a second look showed an alarming number of color changes in the trunk and limbs of the tree—and in the grass and weeds, too. It was a striking design, but an eerie one. Betsy had a number of Halloween designs in her shop. Next to Christmas, it was the most popular seasonal design theme. But only rarely were the Halloween patterns seriously spooky, and none as disturbing as this.
“I call it ‘The Witch’s Tree,’” said Irene.